Towards an Anarchist Ecology: Introduction

We are settlers on this land, raised in cities, rootless, and alienated from the ecosystems we can’t help but be part of. But we want to unlearn what we have been taught by the dominant culture, and in the process, we want to re-learn joy, connection, and wonder, while embracing grief and loss in order to heal. We want to decolonize, and to do this, we need to build a new kind of relationship with the land. We want to take steps towards an anarchist ecology, towards a knowledge of the land that is anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian.

This introduction is the beginning of a seven-part series offering some ideas of what an anarchist ecology might be. The other parts will be released throughout April, this exciting springtime month of high water, busy birds, swelling buds, open windows, and wanderlust. We hope these words will compliment the re-birth and inspiration that this season brings you.

Towards an Anarchist Ecology – it’s a provocative phrase, but what does it mean? Let’s start by looking at each of these terms separately before we consider their meaning together.

Ecology is the study of interconnectedness in natural communities. It’s the way different plants, creatures, and forces interact with each other to create the conditions for the whole ecosystem. It is also the way they collaborate to bring about succession, the process by which one ecosystem gives way towards another. Succession is also a process of resiliency, towards more diversity and greater health. Theoretically, succession eventually reaches a climax community, which is a rich, stable ecosystem that self-perpetuates. However, climax ecosystems are in reality interconnected with systems of healthy disturbances like fire and wind, as well as impacted by human destruction. And so succession is constantly ongoing and all the various stages of succession are present in wild communities.

In our region, the northern-most edge of the Carolinian zone, between Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment, the climax community is often characterized by the association of Sugar Maple and Beech – can you picture that tall, spacious canopy filtering green sunlight down to the soft leaf-littered ground and an understory of Ironwood, Blue Beech, Choke Cherry, and Pagoda Dogwood? Other climax communities around here are the Oak Savannah, now one of the world’s most endangered ecosystems, and the Oak-Hickory forest. Both of these are abundant food forests that sustained the Chonnonton (Neutral), Onandawaga (Seneca), and Misi-zaagiing (Mississauga) peoples whose traditional territory this land is.

We use the word anarchist in the sense of anti-authoritarian, emphasizing the need to challenge the authoritarian tendencies of mainstream ecology, or, as we call it, dominator ecology. Although this is our first time using the word anarchist as the KLR collective, we do identify strongly with anarchy and like organizing within anarchist (and anarchistic) spaces. The clear rejection of the state’s authority by anarchists is a vital step in the process of decolonization. As Mel Bazil, of the Gixsan and Wet’su’weten nations said in a talk at the Victoria Anarchist Bookfair, “Anarchists have stepped away from colonial constructs by asserting that no one is more qualified to live your own life than you.”

And the word ‘towards’ – this is perhaps the most important part of our title. We are not offering clear answers here, and we aren’t speaking authoritatively. We are hoping simply to offer some hints and starting points for building an anti-authoritarian, anti-colonial process of knowing the land. There are lots of folks around who have more experience in this than we do, especially in Indigenous communities. The ideas we will outline here are based on the efforts of our collective, in the three years of its existence, to build and share such a knowledge. We draw from our experience of having offered more than thirty workshops in communities throughout the region and from the different perspectives and ways of knowing we encountered in our travels.

‘Towards’ also reminds us that both decolonization and connecting with the land are ongoing processes. Just as there will never be a point when we can stop unlearning and struggling against colonial constructs, there will never be a time when the living earth will stop filling us with wonder, turning all that we know into a thousand more questions. We want to let go off this idea of arriving at some point at which we no longer need to strive.

In this series, we will offer five starting points for cultivating an anarchist ecology, and we will also take some time to define dominator ecology. Here’s a short summary of the six articles to follow:

Dominator Ecology: Mainstream ecology is deeply colonial and frequently acts at the service of political institutions and corporations. We want to dismiss the practice of dominator ecology, how and why it does what it does, without dismissing many of its insights and findings. We also want to speak honestly about the role dominator ecology plays in the destruction of the wild and ongoing colonization.

Rooted in Relationships: When we talk about knowing the land, we are talking about building a relationship with the land. This involves radical interconnectivity, engagement, reading the land’s history, and cultivating joy and humility.

Deep Listening: Like in any good relationship, we will get to know the land using deep listening, which means reconnecting with our senses, being open to tragic realities, and resisting the easy answers of appropriating spiritual practices.

Urban Ecology: The wild is everywhere, and land in cities is just as important to the health of our watersheds as are conservation areas. We will also explore how the health of human communities and the health of the land are linked by the power dynamics that harm each of them, such as gentrification, industrialism, and industrial collapse.

Re-enchanting: How can we make our passions contagious? How can we spread a decolonizing practice of knowing the land? What issues of access to wild spaces exist, and how can we break those barriers?

Un-expert-ness: The idea of expertise is one of the big ways we’re kept from connecting with the land and kept alienated from our own experience, as if we’re not qualified to notice what is around us. As well, the pressure of ‘being an expert’ can stifle our own growth by making it hard to ask questions and be vulnerable. How can we cultivate non-hierarchical knowledge?

We’ll be publishing two essays a week for the rest of the month, and we want this process to be interactive! If you like what you’re reading, or you have questions, considerations, ideas, or challenges that you’d like us to address, please let us know. You can reach us by email at knowingtheland(at)gmaill(dot)com, find us on facebook as knowingtheland isresistance, or post a comment on this website.

We took on this project of putting down some ideas towards an anarchist ecology because we wanted to learn more and discuss them, so we’re really, really looking forward to hearing from you!

I’m into it for sure and looking forward to reading what’s forthcoming. However, I do hope that “the land” will be understood as including the indigenous peoples that have lived on them and were displaced from them. Our perspective as indigenous people is not that we own the land or are stewards of the land but that we ARE the land. We are connected to every space. You cannot have an intimate relationship with the land without an intimate relationship with us as well. Non-indigenous people forming relationships with the land without forming those relationships with indigenous peoples are still living out colonialism.